“What are you doing sitting down? My mother is standing. Get up, now!”
My husband’s voice cracked like a whip through the crowded bus. He grabbed my arm, his fingers digging into my flesh, pulling me. I was nine months pregnant. My ankles were swollen to the size of grapefruits, my back was screaming in agony, and I was fighting a wave of nausea so intense I thought I might be sick right there in the aisle.
The bus went silent. Every eye turned to us.
I froze. The shame was a physical weight, heavier even than my pregnancy. I looked up at Igor, my husband of three years, and then at his mother, Nina Arkadyevna, who was standing next to him. She didn’t look tired. She looked triumphant. She was looking down at me with that familiar, cold sneer, waiting for me to obey.
And in that moment, surrounded by strangers, humiliated by the two people who were supposed to love me, I realized something terrifying: I wasn’t a person to them. I was a possession. A convenience. A punching bag.
My name is Vera. I’m 28 years old, and this is the story of the worst bus ride of my life, and how it saved me.
The Trap
I hadn’t always been this way. I used to be vibrant, ambitious. I worked as an accountant for a small but growing firm. I loved numbers, I loved order, I loved my independence.
Then I met Igor. He was charming, attentive, a “real man” who promised to take care of me. We married quickly. Too quickly.
I moved into his mother’s apartment. It was supposed to be temporary, just until we saved for a down payment. Three years later, we were still there.
The apartment was Nina’s territory. Every inch of it screamed her name. I was a guest, an unwanted intruder. Igor… Igor changed. The charm evaporated, replaced by a suffocating need for control.
He controlled our finances, even though I was the one earning the steady paycheck while he bounced between “projects” that never paid off. He controlled who I saw, what I wore, what I thought.
“Why do you need to see your friends? You have me.”
“That dress is too revealing. You look cheap.”
“You don’t understand business, Vera. Just let me handle the money.”
Nina was his silent enforcer. She never raised her voice, but her disapproval was a constant, corrosive presence. If I cooked, it was too salty. If I cleaned, I missed a spot. If I tried to talk to Igor about our future, she’d sigh loudly from the next room, a signal for him to shut me down.
I was drowning. Pregnant, exhausted, and utterly alone in a house full of people.
The Day Everything Changed
I woke up that morning feeling awful. The baby was heavy, pressing on my spine. I was nauseous and dizzy. But we had a scheduled appointment at the clinic, and Igor insisted we couldn’t miss it. Nina decided to come along, “to make sure you don’t embarrass us with the doctor.”
“Hurry up,” Igor snapped as I struggled to tie my shoes. “We’re going to be late because of you.”
We walked to the bus stop. He walked ahead, talking to his mother, leaving me to waddle behind them, breathless and aching.
The bus was packed. It was a gray, damp autumn day, and the air inside was thick with the smell of wet coats and too many people. I barely managed to squeeze in.
Miraculously, after two stops, a seat opened up. I practically fell into it, relief washing over me. I closed my eyes for just a second, trying to steady my spinning head.
That’s when it happened.
“What are you doing sitting down? My mother is standing. Get up, now!”
Igor’s shout. The grip on my arm. The silence of the bus.
I looked at Nina. She wasn’t frail. She wasn’t sick. She was a healthy 55-year-old woman who enjoyed seeing me humbled.
“I… I feel sick, Igor,” I whispered, humiliated tears stinging my eyes.
“I don’t care! Get up! Show some respect!”
I was about to do it. I was about to struggle to my feet, apologize, and stand in the swaying aisle while my mother-in-law took my seat with a smug smile. I was programmed to obey.
“Young man, do not yell at a pregnant woman. It is ugly.”
The voice was calm, firm, and totally unexpected. It came from an elderly woman sitting a few feet away. She was tiny, dressed simply, with kind, deep-set eyes that held a steeliness I hadn’t seen in years.
Igor blinked, stunned that someone dared to challenge him. “Mind your own business, old lady!”
She ignored him. She looked directly at me. Her eyes locked onto mine, and in them, I didn’t see pity. I saw recognition. I saw strength.
“Girl,” she said, her voice cutting through the noise of the bus, “you are not a thing. You are not his thing. Save yourself, not his pride.”
Save yourself.
Those two words hit me like a physical blow. They shattered the glass cage I’d been living in. I looked at Igor—really looked at him. His red, angry face. His utter lack of concern for me or our unborn child. I looked at Nina, her lip curled in disdain.
They didn’t love me. They didn’t even like me. I was just a useful appliance they could kick when it didn’t work fast enough.
Something inside me, something I thought had died years ago, sparked back to life. A cold, hard resolve.
Igor tugged my arm again. “I said get UP!”
I yanked my arm back. Hard.
“No,” I said. It wasn’t a shout, but it was the loudest word I’d ever spoken.
Igor froze. “What did you say to me?”
“I said no. I’m not getting up. And I’m not going with you.”
I stood up then, but not for Nina. I stood up for me.
The bus was slowing for the next stop.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Igor hissed, grabbing at me again.
I pushed past him. I didn’t look back. I just stepped off the bus onto the wet pavement.
The doors hissed shut behind me. I watched the bus pull away, Igor’s furious face pressed against the glass.
I was alone on a random street corner. I had no money—Igor kept my cards. I had no coat. I was nine months pregnant.
And I had never felt more free.
The Sanctuary
I walked. I don’t know how long. Hours, maybe. Adrenaline fueled me, pushing past the pain and exhaustion.
I finally found a payphone (a miracle in itself). I had one person left in the world who might help me. Katya.
We’d been best friends since childhood, but Igor had slowly, systematically cut her out of my life. “She’s a bad influence,” he’d say. “She doesn’t respect me.”
I prayed she hadn’t changed her number.
She answered on the third ring. “Hello?”
“Katya? It’s Vera.”
Silence. Then, “Vera? Oh my god, are you okay? You sound…”
“I left him, Katya. I’m on the street. I have nothing. I don’t know where to go.”
“Say no more,” she said instantly, her voice fierce. “Where are you? I’m coming to get you.”
Katya’s apartment was small, cluttered, and the most beautiful place I’d ever seen. She wrapped me in a blanket, made me tea, and listened while I sobbed out the whole ugly story.
She didn’t say “I told you so.” She just held my hand.
“You’re staying here,” she said. “As long as you need. We’ll figure this out. You, me, and the baby.”
The next few months were a blur of fear and determination.
Katya helped me find a lawyer who worked pro bono for women in abusive situations. “It’s not just physical abuse, Vera,” the lawyer, Anna, told me. “Financial control, emotional abuse, isolation—it’s all violence.”
Igor tried to find me. He called Katya, screaming threats, then begging, then threatening again. She blocked him. He showed up at my old job (I had to quit because he made it impossible to work), but they didn’t know where I was.
I focused on two things: my baby and my freedom.
I started doing freelance bookkeeping online under my maiden name. It wasn’t much money, but it was mine. Every ruble I earned felt like a brick in the wall I was building between me and my past.
My son, Sasha, was born two weeks after I left. Katya was with me in the delivery room. When I held him for the first time, tiny and perfect, I knew I had made the right choice. I would never, ever let him grow up watching his father treat his mother like dirt. I would never let him become a man like Igor.
The Divorce
I filed for divorce a month after Sasha was born.
Igor fought it. Not because he wanted me back, but because he wanted to win. He wanted to control me one last time.
He demanded full custody. He claimed I was unstable, unfit, that I had “kidnapped” his son.
But Anna was brilliant. We had records of his unstable income. We had testimony from former neighbors about his shouting. And most importantly, we had my newfound strength.
I stood in court, calm and collected, while Igor ranted and raved, proving every point we made about his temper.
The judge granted me full custody. Igor got supervised visitation, which he stopped using after three months because it was “too inconvenient” for him.
UPDATE: Three Years Later
I’m sitting in a small cafe, watching three-year-old Sasha chase pigeons in the square. He’s laughing, pure unadulterated joy. He has my eyes.
Life is good.
It was hard. Incredibly hard. There were nights I cried myself to sleep, terrified I wouldn’t be able to make rent. There were days I doubted everything.
But I kept going.
I got a full-time job at a large IT company. I worked my way up. I now lead a small team of accountants. I bought my own apartment last year—it’s small, but it’s ours. No one can kick us out.
Igor? I heard from a mutual acquaintance that he’s back living with his mother. He’s had two failed relationships since me. Apparently, not many women are willing to put up with Nina Arkadyevna. He lost his last job because of “conflicts with management.” He’s exactly where he was when I met him, only older and bitterer.
Sometimes, I think about that old woman on the bus. I don’t know her name. I never saw her again. But she saved my life. She saw me when I had become invisible, even to myself.
“Save yourself, not his pride.”
I did. And every time I look at my son, happy and safe and free, I know it was the best decision I ever made.